A Child's Prayer
by BrilliantLady
Summary: Lucifer's returned to Hell, and Trixie isn't happy about that. Mommy doesn't need to worry though, because she and Maze have a plan to fix things. Post Season 4 Fix-It.


Lucifer sat on his high stone throne overlooking his dominion. Hell was just as bleak, and just as dull as he remembered it. The demons were still quarrelsome and violent, and the souls in his keeping monotonous. The one comfort he clung to was that his return to Hell was keeping the woman he loved, and the handful of friends he'd grown to cherish, safe from demonic attack.

He missed them. Every day, every hour. But he never expected to hear from them again. Not until they died, at any rate, and even then, only if guilt lay heavy on their souls. He hoped it wouldn't.

Until one day that all changed when a childish voice rang clearly in his mind.

"Hail Lucifer, Lord of Hell Below, hear ye my prayer. Um, Maze has a message for you. She said to say, 'Hi, _Samael_, did you forget something?'" Trixie's mental voice was clear and sharp in his mind. She _believed_ in him like few truly ever had, with rock-solid faith, and it made her earnest prayer as crystal clear as if she'd simply phoned him up for a chat.

Mazikeen was a _gem_ among demons, to think of suggesting that Chloe's little spawn pray to him. It almost made him forgive her calling him 'Samael', a name he'd cast off millennia ago, after his fall.

"She's pretty mad at you, 'cause you left her behind," Trixie continued.

"Oops," he muttered to himself.

Yes, he probably should have thought about that, come to think of it. He winced. He'd retrieve her… a bit later. After she'd had time to calm down. She'd get over him forgetting about her. She always forgave him, sooner or later.

"That's why she suggested I pray to you about it. 'Cause she said you don't hear demons praying because they don't have souls, but I do, so you'll hear me. She said kids' prayers are strongest but she doesn't know why and told me to stop asking so many damn questions and just do it."

"Yes, that does sound like her," Lucifer mumbled aloud. Trixie wouldn't hear his reply, of course.

"Mommy misses you. She cries a lot, and it's _all your fault_!" Trixie said loudly into his mind, full of righteous fury.

Lucifer's mind was suddenly so full of guilt he knew he'd have to avoid doing any cell inspections of the damned for the foreseeable future, lest he get trapped inside with them. His eyes brimmed with tears.

"Mommy says it's okay to feel mad if that's how I feel, and Maze says it's good to be mad at assholes who deserve it." Trixie's mental voice sounded very smug as she continued, "That's right, I said asshole and you can't stop me because even Mommy agreed that it doesn't count as swearing if you only think it and I wouldn't owe any money to the swear jar. I didn't tell her I was going to swear at you though. I only told Maze. She said, 'Good.' She's _really_ mad at you Lucifer, and so am I."

This… did not sound good. Devil though he was, he felt a thrill of fear send shivers down his back. Yes, he'd definitely give Maze _plenty_ of time to cool off. Maybe twenty years would do it.

"I want you to come home, but I'm also mad at you. So Maze helped me with my plan, and taught me a new song, and I'm going to sing to you until you come home. I'm not very good at singing, especially in my mind, but Maze says that's fine it'll work even better if I'm off key, so here goes."

Her mental voice rose in volume as she started singing loudly and discordantly, "I know a song that'll _get on your nerves! _Get on your nerves. _Get on your nerves! _ I know a song that'll _get on your nerves! And this is how it goesss!_"

Alone on his throne, king of all he surveyed, Lucifer hung his head in his hands and sighed in despair as Trixie's off-key repetitive drone went on and on for an _hour_. What child prays for a whole hour? One with a miracle for a mother, perhaps.

Eventually, to his relief, she finished her prayer with a smug, "For _ever and ever_, Amen."

He relaxed with a sigh and unclenched his hands from their death grip on his infernal throne. She'd come around eventually. What he was doing here was important. He was doing it for her mother, for her, for Ella, for all mortals. Even Detective Douche. He couldn't leave, even though he really wanted to. His demons were restless and needed to be reminded who was in charge, and that the rules included a strict policy of _not possessing humans._

-0-

The next evening she was back again. While he was busy beating the snot out of an uppity demon who had _dared_ to try and leave his realm without permission, Trixie's voice rang out again in his head.

"Hail Lucifer, Lord of Hell Below, hear ye my prayer. I have a new song for you tonight! Are you ready to come home yet?"

There was a brief pause, but apparently his lack of instant manifestation was answer enough for her, for she continued pretty quickly.

"Jerkface. You're a big jerkface, Lucifer. Mommy cried again when I told her I was _sure_ you'd come home soon, and it's all your fault.

"A hundred green bottles! Hanging on the wall. A hundred green bottles, hanging on the wall. And if one green bottle, should accidentally fall, there'd be ninety-nine green bottles, hanging on the wall…"

She made it all the way to zero green bottles before concluding with another self-satisfied 'Amen'.

-0-

The next time she caught him while he was dunking a demon in lava while explaining in angry tones that just because the souls in their keeping were damned it didn't mean you could chew on them.

"Hail Lucifer, Lord of Hell Below, hear ye my prayer. Maze says to say, 'You asshole, where are you?'" Trixie's voice sounded gleeful at indulging in forbidden swearing. "Asshole! She says you love music, and that it might make you happy to hear some David Bowie. That it might remind you of what you're missing on earth and bring you a moment of happiness in a really bad place."

Lucifer felt a glimmering moment of hope before he quashed it. No way in _here_ was Maze ready to forgive him.

"Which is why she agreed with me that I should sing you the Baby Shark song tonight. Because even Daddy yelled at me when I sang it for the fifth time in a row this afternoon as a test run, so I think it might be more annoying for grown-ups than the green bottle song."

Lucifer flung the offending demon he was holding off into a pit of lava and flew off to his impossibly high throne to brood while Trixie sang to him as her _incredibly annoying_ evening prayer.

"Baby shark, doo doo doo doo doo doo, baby shark doo doo doo doo doo doo…"

He groaned as they song went on and on, gratingly off-key. The cheery jingle stuck in his mind to the point that he found himself unconsciously humming it for _hours_ after she'd stopped. Trixie was quite right, it was much worse than A Hundred Green Bottles.

-0-

"Hail Lucifer, Lord of Hell Below, hear ye my prayer."

"Not again!" he bellowed, and fifty demons cowering in front of him tried grovelling even lower into the ashy barren earth. "Do I not suffer enough!"

"No, Lord?" a demon said tentatively.

"Yes, your Majesty!" another yelled.

"Why do you torment me so?" he yelled, eyes flashing with angry fire. The idiot demons who couldn't remember their duties flinched at his anger.

"Never, Lord!"

"Forgive us!"

"Begone!" he roared, and they all scattered, running for their lives.

"You're a poopy-head. Mommy doesn't know I'm praying to you, but she talked about you the other day, and said that it's stupid you can't visit, and that your job _shouldn't_ keep you busy _all_ the time. She thinks I don't know you're ruling Hell, but I do. I'm ten and a half, I'm not _stupid_. You always said you're Lucifer, and Maze is a demon. Derrr! It's pretty obvious."

Lucifer let out a brief chuckle, temporarily thrown out of his black mood.

"I'm not sure about the song tonight. _I _think it's great, but Maze promised you have no taste and to do it anyway. She says sometimes people like different things, and that's okay, and that she promises that you really, really won't like it."

He braced for something worse. What could be worse than that dad-damned shark song?

"I've been learning how to play 'Let it Go' on the recorder. So I'm going to play it for you and think very, very hard about how it sounds. Mommy said I can play for as long as I want if it makes me happy, so long as my bedroom door's closed. So Maze says I should stick with this one all week."

Lucifer buried his head in his hands as Trixie's psychic sending of 'Let it Go' on a squeaky recorder was accompanied by an absent-minded mental singing voice that left out half the words when the recorder part got too tricky for Trixie to split her concentration. On the painfully clear tenth repetition he broke and let out a sob. He really was in Hell.

He clenched his teeth. There was only one possible recourse. With a tremendous beat of his wings he launched himself into the sky, headed for earth.

_Fine_. He'd visit Los Angeles on weekends. Hell would just have to cope with a part-time ruler.

-000-

A/N: I've been binge-watching Lucifer lately and some plunnies attacked! I'll be posting another longer Lucifer fic starting Tuesday next week, on AO3 (Archive of Our Own) only.

As always, typo and grammatical corrections are welcome (though hopefully there's nothing worse than a misplaced comma or two, after all my editing).


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